MBTA Green Line Extension Vehicle Maintenance & Storage Facility

Boston, Massachusetts

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s (MBTA) Green Line is America’s
oldest subway system and serves many of Boston’s colleges and universities,
hospitals, and cultural institutions. The trolley fleet has been modernized
with new low-floor cars. Partnering with the Massachusetts Department of
Transportation (MassDOT) MBTA is extending the Green Line to improve transit
service, mobility, and regional access for residents and visitors in Cambridge,
Somerville, and Medford. MassDOT and the MBTA selected the Joint Venture
Team of HDR Engineering, Inc./Gilbane Building Company to advance
previously-developed conceptual designs and progress the project towards
construction.

As a member of this Design Management Team, Maintenance Design Group
(MDG) led the programming, master planning, and concept design effort for
the Vehicle Maintenance and Storage Facility (VMSF) to a 10% design level.
MDG also advanced the maintenance equipment industrial design during the
preliminary engineering phase to approximately a 30% design level. In addition
to working with HDR to develop yard layouts to accommodate tracks and vehicle
storage for 80 light rail vehicles (LRVs), MDG developed conceptual floor plans
for all buildings and a massing model to show all facility elements including
the LRV transportation operations building, a combined maintenance building,
engineering and maintenance building, and 100-car parking deck over a portion
of the LRV storage tracks.

Project Highlights

Introduced new programming and master planning process to the MBTA which solicited user input.

Increased efficiency of a very tight, irregularly-shaped site with development of a layout that provided 12 more LRV storage spaces and about 50 more employee parking spaces than the previously-developed plan.

Improved yard layout from having more than 60% of LRVs stored on stubend tracks to having 100% of LRVs stored on double-ended through tracks.